SEPARATION PROCESSES

CE 480

LEACHING AND WASHING 01

Evans Chomba
 Leaching
 Introduction
 Equipment For Leaching
 Batch Leaching
 Continous Leaching
Leaching
 LEACHING: INTRODUCTION
Leaching, or solid-liquid extraction, is a process in
which a soluble solute is removed from a solid
matrix using a solvent to dissolve the solute.

 The solute diffuses from inside the solid into the

surrounding solvent.
 Either the extracted solid fraction or the insoluble
solids, or both, may be valuable products.

Leaching is widely used in the metallurgical, natural

product, and food industries.
 LEACHING

Familiar Example:
Making coffee from
ground coffee beans or
tea from tea leaves.

The complex mixture of

chemicals that give
coffee and tea their
odor, taste, and
physiological effects are
leached from the solids
by the hot water.
 LEACHING
Leaching generally involves diffusion of solutes
in the solid but it may also involve;

 washing of solutes or extract off the solid's

surfaces,
 displacement of extract from interparticle pores
and solubilization
 reaction induced creation of solutes from insoluble
precursors
A special leaching process, when an undesirable
component is removed from a solid with water, is
called washing
 Industrial Application
 Leaching is widely used in the biological and food
processing industries, such as the separation of
sugar from sugar beets with hot water.
 The extraction of oils from peanuts, soybeans,
sunflower seeds, cotton seeds, and halibut livers.
 In pharmaceutical industry, many products are
obtained by leaching plant roots, leaves, and stems.
 In the metals processing industry, leaching is used
to remove the metals from their ores, which contains
many undesirable constituents, as solute salts.
 In gold leaching, gold is leached from its ore using
an aqueous sodium cyanide solution.
 Principles of Leaching
Leaching can be batch, semi-batch, or continuous. Can be
operated at an elevated temperature to increase the solubility
of the solute in the solvent.

Feed to a leaching system typically is solid, consisting of

basically insoluble carrier material and a (usually desirable)
soluble compound.
The feed usually must be prepared by grinding or chopping.
It is then mixed with a liquid solvent.

The desired material dissolves (to some extent) and so leaves

when the liquid is drawn off as overflow. The solids are then
removed as underflow. The underflow is wet, and so some of
the solvent/solute mixture is carried out here as well.

Flow through a leaching system may be crosscurrent or

countercurrent
Leaching
 Leaching
Leaching occurs in two steps:
1. Contacting solvent and solid to effect a transfer
of a solute (leaching).
2. The separation of the remaining solution from
the solid (washing).

Factors influencing the rate of extraction:

There are four important factors to be considered:
1. Particle size.
2. Solvent.
3. Temperature.
4. Agitation of the fluid.
 Rate of Leaching
Generally there are five rate steps in the leaching
process:
1. The solvent is transferred from the
bulk solution to the surface of the
solid.
2. The solvent penetrates or diffuses
into the solid (intraparticle
diffusion).
3. The solute dissolves from the solid
into the solvent.
4. The solute diffuses through the
mixture to the surface of the solid
(intraparticle diffusion).
5. The solute is transferred to the
bulk solution.
Step 1 is usually fast. The rate controlling process
is generally the intraparticle diffusion or the
dissolving step.
 Equipment For Leaching
Leachable solids generally undergo pretreatment before being
fed to leaching equipment so that reasonable leaching times
are obtained.
 When leachable solids contain a high % of solute,
pretreatment may not be necessary because disintegration
of the remaining skeleton of insoluble material takes place
at the surface of the particles as leaching progresses.

 When the entire solid is soluble, leaching may be rapid,

such that only one stage of extraction is required as
dissolution takes place.
The type of equipment employed depends on the nature
of the solid—whether it is granular or cellular and whether
it is coarse or fine.
 Equipment For Leaching
 Industrial equipment for solid–liquid extraction is designed
for batch-wise or continuous processing.
 The method of contacting solids with solvent is either by
percolation of solvent through a bed of solids or by
immersion of the solid in the solvent followed by
agitation of the mixture.
 When immersion is used, countercurrent, multistage
operation is common.
 With percolation, either a stage-wise or a differential
contacting device is appropriate.
 An extractor must be efficient to minimize the need for
solvent because of the high cost of solvent recovery.
 Batch Extractors
Pachuca Tank
 When the solids to be leached are
in the form of fine particles,
perhaps smaller than 0.1 mm in
diameter, leaching is conveniently
conducted in an agitated vessel
like a Pachuca Tank.
 Solvent and solids are placed in
the tank and agitation is achieved
by an air lift, whereby air bubbles
entering cause upward flow and
subsequent circulation of the
solid–liquid suspension.
 During agitation, air continuously
enters and leaves the vessel.
When the desired degree of
leaching is accomplished,
agitation stops and solids are
allowed to settle into a sludge at
the bottom, where it is removed
with the assistance of air.
Source: Seader, Separation Process Principles, 3rd ed
 Batch Extractors
Batch Plant for the  Upper section is filled with the
Extraction of Oil from charge of seeds which is sprayed
Seeds with fresh solvent via a
distributor.
 Solvent percolates through the
bed of solids and drains into the
lower compartment where,
together with any water
extracted from the seeds, it is
continuously boiled off by means
of a steam coil.
 The vapours are passed to an
external condenser, and the
mixed liquid is passed to a
separating box from which the
The plant consists of a vertical solvent is continuously fed back
cylindrical vessel divided into two to the plant and the water is run
sections by a slanting partition. to waste.
 By this means a concentrated
solution of the oil is produced by
the
Source: continued
Coulson application
& Richardson Chemical of2. pure
Engineering, Volume rd
3 Ed
 Continous Extractors
 When leaching is carried out on a large scale, it is preferable to use
an extraction device that operates with continuous flow of both
solids and liquid.
 Some of the widely discussed extractors are the Bollman and
Rotocel extractors.
 These differ mainly with respect to the manner in which solids are
transported and the degree to which agitation of solid–liquid
mixtures is provided.

Several extractors described in the literature are now either

obsolete or infrequently used because of various limitations,
including ineffective contacting of solid and liquid phases,
bypassing, and fines entrainment.
The Kennedy extractor for oil extraction from soybeans may
have a low efficiency in some applications, but it is still used
and still available.
 Continous Extractors
Bollmann
 The Bollmann continuous moving bed extractor Extractor
consists of a series of perforated baskets,
arranged as in a bucket elevator and contained in
a vapour-tight vessel, is widely used with seeds
which do not disintegrate on extraction.
 Solid is fed into the top basket on
the downward side and is
discharged from the top basket on
the upward side
 Solvent is sprayed on to the solid
which is about to be discarded,
and passes downwards through
the baskets so that countercurrent
flow is achieved.
 The solvent is finally allowed to
flow down through the remaining
baskets in co-current flow

Source: Coulson & Richardson Chemical Engineering, Volume 2. 3 rd Ed

 Continous Extractors

 Baskets are rotated slowly, at

about 1 rph, to give solids
residence times of 60 minutes.
 Each basket contains
approximately 350 kg of flaked
solids. For the 23 baskets
shown in the figure on the right,
almost 200,000 kg of solids can
be extracted per day.
 About equal mass flows of
solids and solvent are fed to the
extractor.
 Full miscella is essentially
solids-free, with about 25 wt%
oil.

Source: Seader, Separation Process Principles, 3rd ed

 Continous Extractors
Rotocel extractor  The cells, which hold
solids and are perforated
for solvent drainage,
successively pass a
solids-feed area, a series
of solvent sprays, a final
spray and drainage area,
and a solids-discharge
area.
 Fresh solvent is supplied
to the cell located just
below the final spray
and drainage area, from
where drained liquid is
collected and pumped to
the preceding cell
location.
 The drainage from that
cell is collected and
pumped to the cell
Source: Seader, Sepaartion Process Principles, 3rd ed
preceding that cell and
 Batch Leaching
 Mass transfer rates within
the porous residue are
difficult to assess.

 We can obtain an
approximate indication of
the rate of transfer from
the particles to the bulk of
the liquid.

 We can use the concept of

a thin film as providing the
resistance to transfer.
Continuous Leaching
 Constant Underflow
The amount of solvent removed with the insoluble solid in
the underflow is constant, and independent of the
concentration of the solution in the thickener, then the
amount of solvent leaving each thickener in the underflow
will then be the same, and therefore the amount of solvent
in the overflow will also be the same. Hence the ratio of the
solvent discharged in the overflow to that in the underflow
is constant. This will be taken as R, where:
Constant Underflow

Where: f = fractional solute

discharge
Recovery = 1 – f
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